SB50

COP in the UK

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Though not really a matter for negotiators, this week it was announced that the U.K. will pick up the UNFCCC mantle after Chile’s COP25 by hosting COP26 from 9th – 20th November 2020. Initially, Italy had also wanted to host, while there was a persistent claim from Turkey that they too wished to have the dubious honour of spending millions of euros to welcome 40,000 people for a fortnight of negotiations.

The country which hosts the summit has significant power in shaping the agenda and influencing the outcome—there is no such thing as a neutral host—and U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt (currently a contender in the Tory Party leadership race) clearly views COP26 as an opportunity to boost his own brand and restore some diplomatic prestige to the U.K. in the aftermath of a rough few years of Brexit carry-on.

But hosting the summit is also a major deal for the U.K. climate justice movement—recently rejuvenated by Extinction Rebellion’s direct action tactics, Fridays For Futures/School Strike’s clear moral message, and both the U.K. and Global Green New Deal’s clarity of vision.  

The UN climate talks are coming to Britain. The climate justice movement will be ready

The opportunity is there – though by no means an easy one to take – to build the power of the UK climate justice movement. This has little-to-nothing to do with the technical process inside the COP and everything to do with the process leading up to hosting, the mobilizations, the narrative that gets shaped etc.

UK movements would do well to turn to previous COP host nations for examples of how, and how not, to make best use of the opportunity. It is a complicated affair.

SB50

Climate Justice Without Borders & Ende Gelände

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While negotiations in the World Conference Centre Bonn proceeded in their uniquely complex, bizarrely mundane, and frustratingly detached fashion, over the weekend the far more significant responses to the unfolding climate crisis took place on the streets of Aachen and in the Rhineland open pit mines.

On Friday 40,000 predominantly young people descended on Aachen as part of the Fridays For Future / School Strike For Climate.

Though the School Strikes have not (yet) opted to raise specific demands beyond a general call to urgent “climate action”, there is a definite appetite for system change visible on many of their demonstrations. This march was no different in that regard.

Where this march differed from other School Strike mobilizations was the overtly internationalist stance it adopted. The official name of the central strike in Aachen was Climate Justice Without Borders. As World Refugee Day fell last week, this was particularly timely, and reflects a growing recognition that the fight for climate justice is intimately bound with the fight for migrant and refugee rights.

The march ended with a rally with many musical acts and political speeches. A strong climate justice message was delivered not only from an impressive young woman MC, who reminded the crowd of their responsibility as Europeans, whose societies and economies have benefitted from climate-destroying activities, to push their own governments into a just and adequate response. This message was taken further by Tetet Lauron, a member of our Coordinating Committee, who reminded the crowd that the three most important life lessons were all learn in kindergarten.

The wider Fridays For Future / Youth 4 Climate young people’s movement was also introduced to some climate justice concepts as Greta Thunberg released a snippet of her lecture at a conference in Stockholm, where she told the audience that their overconsumption as high-polluting elites was denying many people around the world the chance of fulfilling their right to a dignified life.

Rather than making people feel guilty, a deep understanding of the inequities of our world usually leads people to take action. And so it was that the direct action of Ende Gelaende was introduced.

For the 4th year, thousands of activists aimed to turn the slogan “Keep It In The Ground” into a reality but occupying a major lignite mine. The photos speak louder than words.

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Photo: Ruben Neugebauer/Ende Gelände
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Photo: Tim Lüddemann/Ende Gelände
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Photo: Ende Gelände

Part of the beauty of Ende Gelände is not only that it aims to shut down fossil infrastructure, but the way it attempts to do so. There is far more hope to be found in a dirty open pit mine facing the violence of police brutality, than there is in the comfortable and exclusive World Conference Centre Bonn – to where we now return.

SB50

The issues

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Photo Credit: ENB/Kiara Worth

Some of the issues being discussed here in Bonn are outlined here in the ever-excellent Third World Network’s curtain raiser.

Or, if you’re really nerdy, you can read the “reflections note” by the chair of one of the negotiation track.

The ins and outs of the negotiations, which sometimes take several days to even adopt their agendas, can be followed in more detail via the Third World Network updates or the Earth Negotiations Bulletins or of course, on our twitter.

From a climate justice perspective, we have the same, as yet unmet, demands and overriding priorities in Bonn as we did in Katowice before the rulebook was agreed.

As the negotiations progress we will agitate for: a conflict of interest policy to prevent corporations from weakening the rules; support for countries that are hit by climate impacts to rebuild and pick up the pieces after disasters; and measures to prevent countries from exploiting loopholes to carry on polluting while pretending to be “neutral” through offsets.

SB50

Bonn, Again

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As the world hurtles ever faster towards complete ecological breakdown, international climate change negotiations resume this week in Bonn, Germany, and members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice are here to do what they do best: demand climate justice.

A bit of background…

After 3 years of negotiations, countries finally agreed to a set of (almost) comprehensive guidelines to implement the Paris Agreement during the COP24 session, held last December in Katowice, Poland.  

Trying to make sense of #COP24? This is how #climatejustice spokespeople have reacted: https://t.co/HNPdegk8tD— Demand Climate Justice (@gcdcj) December 15, 2018

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets the bar for what climate action looks like globally, nationally, and in many ways locally. Holding governments to account in this process hinges on demands being delivered back “home”.

Thankfully a burgeoning global climate justice movement is beginning to bring together various strategies of articulating and realising alternative visions for the world, electoral politics, and targeting the corporate polluters by exposing their financial support, their social license, their infrastructure, and their political connections.

However, even though most of the Paris Rulebook is complete, there is still a lot of detail to work on in the negotiations and a long way to go before actions match rhetoric.

The road ahead

This session – SB50 – marks 25 years of meetings of the subsidiary bodies to the UNFCCC and the start of the post-Paris process of ratcheting up the national targets. At this session parties will consult on what will be a political outcome to increase ambition. 2019 – 2020 is a critical period for countries to focus on ratcheting up their existing climate action plans to deliver the scale of climate action needed – through international finance, technology transfer, and capacity building on an unprecedented scale to enable all countries to reduce emissions to zero as quickly as possible, with richer countries taking the lead on emissions cuts in the region of 80-90% by 2030.

The next step is the UN Secretary General Climate Action Summit in New York in September, where only countries who put forward more ambitious national plans are invited to speak. Will this be an empty stage? Given that ambition can be defined as action on adaptation, and on increased support for action in other countries, there is plenty of scope for countries to turn up in September with increased ambition, in all its forms, including actions that are conditional on support being given.

At COP25 in Chile this December there will be a final effort to take stock of climate action being done in the pre-2020 period. Developed countries have ignored this critical period since 2012, when they agreed the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which obliged them to make aggregate emission cuts that would be at least 18 per cent below 1990 levels. The Doha Amendment has not come into effect due to a failure by many developed countries to ratify it in their national parliaments.

In Chile countries are expected to arrive at a political outcome to enhance their pledges under the Paris Agreement (pledges which only apply after 2030).

Next, at the COP in 2020, countries must deliver long-term (2050) low greenhouse gas emission development strategies, as well as new and enhanced national pledges that are in line with the science for a pathway to 1.5C. This means the emissions reductions, adaptation, and support pledged must put us on a trajectory to zero emissions, well before 2050, and with richer countries completely phasing out all fossil fuels by the 2030s.